In recent years the need for phone numbers has increased dramatically. A person may have a landline home phone number, a landline fax number, a cellular phone number, an office phone number, as well as other phone numbers. As the use of phone numbers in a particular area code grows too large, a service provider has to come up ways to accommodate the growing need for numbers in a geographical region. In the past, service providers divided a geographical region served by an area code into two geographical halves. In a first geographical half, subscribers would maintain their phone number with the original area code. In a second geographical half, subscribers would be assigned a new number with a new area code and the number they were previously assigned would be freed. Because the freed numbers had the same area code as the numbers comprising the first geographical half, the freed numbers could be assigned to new subscribers in the first geographical half. The volume of changed numbers led to misdialed and missed calls. This approach to accommodating growth in the phone numbers is no longer used.
The current approach to accommodating growth for new telephone numbers is to overlay a region with a new area code. The new area code is used for newly assigned telephone numbers. Using this method, the telephone numbers of existing customers remained the same. Unfortunately, this approach requires callers to include the country code and area code when dialing a phone number. This entails dialing eleven digits rather than the formerly required seven digits. This additional burden has been a source of frustration for local callers, particularly as technology in other domains continues to become simpler.
Thus a need exists for a way to permit callers to dial an abbreviated seven or fewer digits number when making a phone call.